In life, there are two ironclad certainties: death and taxes. We ought to add a third, politically speaking, that all governments enjoy a honeymoon period after coming to office.
Sooner or later, though, governments exhaust political capital in seeking to implement their policy agenda, encounter unexpected geopolitical events or exogenous economic shocks and ultimately disappoint hardier supporters and swinging voters who owe less fealty.
Anthony Albanese’s honeymoon period has officially ended.Credit: Dionne Gain
As recently pointed out by psephologist Kevin Bonham, our current prime minister has managed to enjoy the second-longest honeymoon period Australia has seen. Marginally eclipsing John Howard in 1996, Anthony Albanese comes in second to Kevin Rudd – and that didn’t end well.
Albanese’s extended honeymoon owed to a variety of factors. First, for the first 15 months or more, the government was widely seen as cautious, considered and competent. It made a virtue of keeping its election promises, restored a sense of civility to public debate and worked hard to fix frayed relationships with key allies, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
As a corollary, Labor’s 2022 election victory was more of a personal rejection of Scott Morrison than it was an endorsement of Albanese, who claimed the top job with the lowest Labor primary vote since the 1930s. Labor also benefited from the lingering bad odour of its predecessor – the revelations of Morrison’s secret ministries and those from the robo-debt royal commission to name just two.
But as they say in the classics, the honeymoon is most definitely over, baby.
If an election were held today, Labor would still win. Yet, Bonham estimates the two-party preferred vote is down to 52.9 per cent for the ALP, representing a slide of 1.4 points since mid-August. A Morgan poll released this week had the ALP trailing on a two-party preferred vote, most others show a severe narrowing.
The Voice referendum defeat certainly played a key role in this, less because of the outcome than how the campaign was run. The deficit of strategic flexibility has left some questioning Albanese’s judgment.
Still, the Voice won’t be a determining factor at the next election, scheduled to take place in the next 18 months. Cost-of-living pressures, rising interest rates, the housing affordability and supply crisis, and general economic gloom are far more pertinent.
So where does Albanese’s government sit in the pantheon of political honeymoons? We are inclined to forget that Bob Hawke very nearly lost his first attempt at re-election in 1984, only scraping back into office. In response, he and treasurer Paul Keating got on with the job of selling big-bang economic reform. Keating’s own honeymoon after the unwinnable 1993 election rapidly came apart on the back of his infamous broken promise on tax cuts he had earlier declared to be “L-A-W” and a sense that his ambitious cultural agenda of reconciliation, the republic and multiculturalism jarred with an electorate whose memories of the early 1990s recession were raw.
It is generous to describe Tony Abbott enjoying any sort of honeymoon at all. His disastrous 2014 budget with its cuts to health, education and other services, combined with his pursuance of culture wars including the widely mocked “knighting” of Prince Philip, put paid to that. Abbott’s Coalition won 53.5 per cent of the two-party vote at the September 2013 election. By the end of the year, leading polls had the Coalition trailing Labor at 48 per cent to 52, arguably the fastest and most savage turnaround in modern history. Morrison’s government was on the nose after his ill-judged trip to Hawaii at the peak of the 2019 bushfires, and the boost it received from COVID-19 incumbency evaporated once the pandemic’s worst days were over. Avoiding hubris, focusing on voters’ hip-pocket concerns and not peripheral culture wars, and having a nuanced understanding of one’s mandate, are the key lessons to be taken from these governments.
So what can Labor do next? It will need to take a few considered risks leading up to the 2024 federal budget in May, namely with a big-bang policy reset pivoting to the economy. Albanese might learn from Howard, whose first-term honeymoon came crashing down as it was beset by multiple ministerial resignations and scandals. Going into the 1998 election behind Labor in the polls, Howard embarked upon the GST debate, which very likely saved his government. It gave him something to campaign on, and it sharpened the distinctions between his government and the opposition.
Tweaking the stage three tax cuts could be Albanese’s GST moment. It is good politics and good economics for three reasons: it is fiscally prudent in constrained times, it will not add to inflationary pressures, and is fair and equitable.
The experience of Rudd should be equally instructive to Labor this time around. The collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 discombobulated Rudd and, in their aftermath, he ditched the government’s signature Emissions Trading Scheme. Following the coup against him in 2010, Labor was unable to properly campaign on its stewardship of the economy through the global financial crisis.
For Labor, it isn’t time to panic – yet – and there can be no repeat of the Rudd years. The ending of political honeymoons can presage more drastic deterioration in marital relations or act as a circuit breaker. In this, Albanese would be wise not to underestimate Peter Dutton.
Nick Dyrenfurth is executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre.
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Albanese’s honeymoon is over. Here’s how he can keep the romance alive
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22.11.2023
In life, there are two ironclad certainties: death and taxes. We ought to add a third, politically speaking, that all governments enjoy a honeymoon period after coming to office.
Sooner or later, though, governments exhaust political capital in seeking to implement their policy agenda, encounter unexpected geopolitical events or exogenous economic shocks and ultimately disappoint hardier supporters and swinging voters who owe less fealty.
Anthony Albanese’s honeymoon period has officially ended.Credit: Dionne Gain
As recently pointed out by psephologist Kevin Bonham, our current prime minister has managed to enjoy the second-longest honeymoon period Australia has seen. Marginally eclipsing John Howard in 1996, Anthony Albanese comes in second to Kevin Rudd – and that didn’t end well.
Albanese’s extended honeymoon owed to a variety of factors. First, for the first 15 months or more, the government was widely seen as cautious, considered and competent. It made a virtue of keeping its election promises, restored a sense of civility to public debate and worked hard to fix frayed relationships with key allies, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
As a corollary, Labor’s 2022 election victory was more of a personal rejection of Scott Morrison than it was an endorsement of Albanese, who claimed the top job with the lowest Labor primary vote since the 1930s. Labor also benefited from the lingering bad odour of........
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